External HDD Unknown/Unallocated/Not Initialized Data error - Time for a funeral?

[DrPopkorne]

Just had a teary-eyed HOD come in as their back-up hard drive has gone bust. After working on some files last night she can now longer get it to mount on any computer. Her main USB broke last month so she's been using her backup. I'm afraid I might have to give her the bad news.

Disk Management shows it as an Unallocated 2048GB disk with no active partitions. I am unable to Initialize it as I get an error "Data error (cyclic redundancy check)."

I took the drive out of the shell and put it in one of our cradles and it started whirring again however I haven't been able to find any leads. I'm unable to use CHKDSK /f as there is no assigned drive letter and the PC does not detect any volume to navigate manually. I did try some third-party apps which seemed to indicate a partition error. DISKPART also lists no partitions on the disk and shows it as a 2TB drive. this is strange as it is only a 120GB HDD. I can't see any sign of corrosion and I'm about ready to call it dead, but I always find it good nature to ask the true professionals before giving a girl the sad news!

 

I have never had a good experience with partition recovery tools and it seems like they all lure you into costs or come from some shady company that run a bogus 'scan' and suggest that yes it is possible to recover your data before directing you to a shop. I wanted to ask if anyone had used software of this nature with success before?

[NB9457]

Try it on a Mac

[Bedders]

In the past, as NB9457 has said, sometimes a Mac will read what a Windows machine won't. I'd also suggest burning Ubuntu to a DVD or bootable pen drive, then taking a look through there and seeing if you can get anything back.

 

On the topic of Data Recovery, I've successfully used Zero Assumption Recover (Data Recovery Software, Solutions, Tutorials - ZAR Data Recovery) which I've paid for, and Recuva (https://www.piriform.com/recuva). Good luck!

[DrPopkorne]

Sadly I have a similar issue on the Mac, being unable to initialize the device. It does solidify my thoughts that the device may be broken. So far I've been unable to tinker with it in any way because it fails before any configuration is shown.

[jessica]

I've had success with testdisk before

TestDisk Download - CGSecurity